Installing the Go Programming Language is pretty easy, but can be a pain when done behind a firewall and there isn’t one page with all the information necessary. So, here is the one page.

For step: “$ sudo easy_install mercurial”

“mercurial” is probably already in your favorite distro, it is for debian at least. So instead of using the easy_install script, try your distro’s package management app. For debian, apt-get install mercurial did the trick. If you insist on doing it manually, you might need a proxy statement in your env like:

You should probably have an .hgrc file with proxy information in it, including the user name and password for the proxy (be sure to take the credentials out again after install, and only put em in when using hg again)

———– .hgrc with just the minimum necessary contents —————-
[http_proxy]
# Used to access web-based Mercurial repositories through a HTTP proxy.

host=myproxy:1234

passwd=mysecretpassword

user=myuser
——————————————————-

For step: “$ ./all.bash”

At the moment there are tests ran during the build, requiring network connectivity. There is discussion on the go-nuts mailing list about fixing it, but until then removing “http” and “net” from tests in the make file:

$GOROOT/src/pkg/Makefile

will get you “Go”-ing again.

To do this, search for NOTEST and add entries “http\” and “net\” to the end, using tabs for the indentation. The complete list should look like the following when complete:
NOTEST=\debug/proc\exp/draw\go/ast\go/doc\go/token\hash\image\image/jpeg\malloc\rand\runtime\syscall\testing/iotest\xgb\http\net\

It really surprises me to speak positively about these folks but damn, this is the right thing to do at the right time.

Microsoft appear to be converting their support site (the Microsoft Answers Forum) into a kind of open market place where amateur Microsoft experts can answer questions from users while negotiating their own prices for their time. Microsoft (again) appear to be simply hosting the site, and not trying to take a cut of the amateur experts’ take, saying they only intend to reduce the cost of their tech support.

There are other sites around like stackoverflow, and Experts-Exchange who either don’t allow the expert to make money or have some elaborate membership/fee system, but so far this is the first I have seen that operate like a free market. It will be interesting to watch.

Now if I only had not ignored windows for the last 13 years, I could work at home in my jammies helping people reboot. Dang!

You can read more about this in the at the sites linked here but it is not something you cant sign up for easily yet. It seems it is an invite only beta with new users being chosen from participants in the existing Microsoft Answers Forum